What a wild ride it feels I have just been on. Although just a normal Indian day trip, the exotic sights, sounds (and smells) all around, combined with the constantly comical and often crazy traffic, have been both fascinating and exhausting. We have left Delhi, and though we only traveled about 120 miles, we were on the road for 9 hours. The roads in India are like nothing we can see in the USA. Due to the wide variety of vehicles, (cars, trucks, rickshaws, bicycles, horse & water buffalo drawn carts and pedestrians to name a few) and a lot of construction, the roads are very inefficient. The nearest thing to an interstate here has all of the above mentioned traffic on it, making it impossible to have a minimum speed limit. Also, every time you pass through a town or village, the congestion reduces your speed to around 13 miles per hour. Although it can be frustrating how much time you have to spend driving to get some where, I found that I really enjoyed it. Often when we travel in the United States, it is easy to “check out” and not really experience what we are whizzing by at 75 miles an hour. Here, you are immersed in it every moment, the slow speeds and constant stopping providing a much more intimate contact with the country and with the people.
We left Delhi a little bit later than we had hoped. Max, who was to be our translator, called us and said that he would not be able to join us until Saturday, so in the mean time Vijay has very graciously agreed to come along. He was such a blessing. In addition to asking directions in Hindi along the confusing roads he did a terrific job navigating through the complex and tight traffic. Delhi is so huge it takes hours to get through, and then there was most of the height of the province of Uttar Pradesh. It is here that Dad first met Sunnil, and we are planning on visiting his many churches he has help start in this area. Today our destination was not Sitarganj, were Sunnil lives, but Rudrapur. COI has started a new outreach here and has ordained several new evangelists to head it up. We are hoping to spend a few days encouraging the Christians here and aiding Sunill and the other pastors in outreach.When we reached Rudrapur we met one of the local evangelists for this area, Rajaram. Although he speaks no Englsih, he is so kind and obviously full of the Spirit of Christ. I am eagerly looking forward to seeing the new work here, as well as getting into the countryside and being with these humble, quiet people.
Today I was reminded of how important language is to evangelism and how little Hindi I know. As we were doing some errands is Rudrapur, I came across a group of young men. I gave them each a Christian Hindi tract, which they enthusiastically opened and began reading. One of them, in very broken English, was able to communicate to me that, “I muslim... you Christian... you tink Jesu is son of Allah... I tink Jesu is messenger of Allah.” As I attempted to explain how Allah could have a son, and that with out his perfect sacrifice, there is no way we can appease God, he shook his head and said, “I no understand what you saying. You speak Hindi?” I had to give my one of twenty sentences answer, “Me boht zya da nahe bolte hain,” (I speak very little.) I can only pray that he will read the tract and seek Allah for truth.
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